1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for correlating each segment of an original language document to each segment of its translated language document.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the internationalization of information, a document described in a specific language (for example, English) is frequently translated into another language (for example, Japanese). In such an environment, it often becomes necessary to compare an original document with its translation. Such necessity occurs in a case where a sentence translated by a translation machine is checked, a case where necessary knowledge is extracted for preparing a translation assistance tool from a set of original text and its translated text, and so on. In this case, it is convenient if the correspondence between each segment of an original document and each segment of its translation is shown. In this case, a “segment” means, for example, a “sentence”, a “phrase”, a “word” or the like composing a document of a natural language, although it is not especially limited.
As a prior art, a method for automatically detecting the correspondence between an original document and its translation for each segment using a computer, and graphically displaying the correspondence is proposed based on such a request (see, for example, Patent document 1).
Patent document 1: Japanese Patent Publication No. H9-179868 (that is, Japanese Patent No. 3311567), FIG. 6.
Products for detecting and displaying such a correspondence have already been sold. As such a product, “Winalign” attached to the “Translator's Workbench” of TRADOS Corporation (http://www.trados.com/) is known.
However, in the prior art, the larger the amount of information of a document to be compared, the lower the accuracy of the correspondence between segments. In addition, when the order of paragraphs differs between an original document and its translation, the accuracy of the correspondence between segments is low. Furthermore, if no segment corresponding to a segment in an original document exists in its translation or if a segment not existing in an original document is added in its translation, its influence widely spreads, thereby degrading the accuracy of the correspondence between segments.
The above-mentioned prior art provides an interface for correcting the incorrect correspondence, when an incorrect correspondence is detected. However, if the accuracy of the correspondence between segments is low, a user must do a lot of correction work.